


how it ends (forbidden)

by artificialmeggie (ohmymeggs), mia_ugly



Series: Behind Closed Doors [8]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Avengers Anthology, M/M, S11 Tour, post breakup, prior relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 00:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19860355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmymeggs/pseuds/artificialmeggie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_ugly/pseuds/mia_ugly
Summary: Maybe you fall in love on television (maybe you fall in love somewhere else.)





	how it ends (forbidden)

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing but love to the Avengers discord, and especially Meggie and Evan for their beta skills and alllll the emotional labour. This anthology was a pleasure, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. (And darling, this is not the happy ending you were looking for, but it’s yours. Like everything, everything else.)

****The day comes (or night, whatever) that they have to make a rule.

It’s Vanjie who says it first, lying horizontal across Brooke’s bed, sweat and lamplight shining against his skin. They’ve fucked twice already, tearing at buttons the moment the door to Brooke’s hotel room slammed shut. The first time was starving, up against the wall with Vanjie’s teeth on Brooke’s neck to muffle the sounds he didn’t want to know he could make. The second time was slower, in bed, one of Brooke’s hands underneath Vanessa’s knee. The other on the side of his face, thumb hovering over his temple. Their eyes locked, pupils blown.

Vanjie is kinda fucked up after that. Feels like something’s sitting on his chest, and not in the fun way.

When Brooke gets up to fill a glass of water, that’s when Vanjie finally says it (to his naked back, not to his face. If Brooke was looking at him, there’d be no way, no damn way.)

“I think we gotta stop this.”

There’s no sound in the bathroom. Vanjie can make out the shadowy shape of Brooke, leaning against the sink. Not moving.

“Like - I ain’t getting my head right, we keep doing this. You ain’t either.” 

He’s been thinking it for awhile, much as he tried not to. If he didn’t think about it, then he wouldn’t have to change anything - could just ignore A’Keria’s sad puppy eyes and Silky’s bullshit comments and do whatever the hell he wanted. Could go back to Brooke’s room and strip off his clothing and trace the cords of Brooke’s muscles with his hands and his mouth. Could push him up against a wall, or fall into bed with him, or follow him into the shower and kiss him, kiss him, kiss him until they were both breathless and desperate and dying for it and Vanjie was getting on his knees -

And then Brooke could do that sort of thing with someone else.

If he wanted. 

Whenever he wanted. 

And Vanjie could just - have a few too many shots on those nights. Dance real slow with strangers and talk too loud and drink until A’Keria or Silk were forced to drag his sloppy ass back to the hotel, pour water down his throat, distract him when he thought he was going to be sick or maybe start crying.

Vanjie’s been fighting hangovers a lot more lately. That ain’t his style. He doesn’t want to end up one of those queens who goes a little too hard, lets their shit become a problem. He already has a fucking problem, and it’s leaning all pale and fine as china in the bathroom, empty glass of water in its hand.

“You’re - probably right.” Brooke’s voice is rough. He still doesn’t move so Vanjie gets up, starts looking for his clothes. He’s a big girl, he can dress himself. Pretty soon Brooke’s going to walk out of the bathroom naked and if Vanjie doesn’t have some sort of barrier between them by then it’s going to be damn near impossible to leave. His shirt is at the foot of the bed, pants - where the fuck? There - the armchair. Vanjie grabs whatever he sees, dresses quickly, tells himself his hands aren’t shaking. He can’t find a sock. Where’s his damn sock?

“Are you okay?” Brooke finally comes out into the lamplight, like some sort of statue from Greece, something you’d see in a museum.

Vanjie swallows and turns his head away (don’t look at him, don’t touch him.)

He can live without Brooke. He swears to God he can. But he ain’t going to learn how if they keep doing this.

“No more - touching. If we aren’t -“ ( _If_? Fuck right off.) “We aren’t,” Vanjie corrects himself. There ain’t no _if,_ there’s nothing uncertain about it. “So I can’t. It doesn’t work for me.”

It’s actually working a little too well for him, and that’s why he’s gotta say something now. He’s looking for his love story, and none of the good ones end like this. Sure, this sort of casual thing might be okay for some people, but he ain’t one of them - and yet here he is, all because this stupid Canadian smiles so pretty, moves like a riptide on the dance floor, and knows exactly where to touch Vanjie to make him turn to glitter in his arms.

Vanjie might be in love with him (and that’s fine. It’s all good. It don’t matter.)

Falling is the sort of thing Vanjie never had a problem with. He falls over and over again, eyes wide open, doesn’t fucking learn. 

Being loved ain’t usually a problem either. After Season 10, people loved him. He was all up in his feelings, but he realized quick that people were seeing things in him - seeing him like he was something. Sometimes on the tour when he’s dancing onstage and Brooke’s watching from the wings, Vanjie wants to throw all that love in his face. When the people reach out to touch him, toss their dollar bills, scream as he dances the house down – Vanjie wants to grab Brooke by the jaw and say, “ _Look_ , look at this. They love me. Me, this growly little cookie-monster in swimsuits and fucking sparkles. Every one of these motherfuckers love me ( _ **why why why won’t you**_.)” 

But he doesn’t do any of that. That’d be some kinda crazy.

“You’re right.” Brooke sits down on the bed, has the decency to wrap a sheet around his waist. His shoulders are slumped, but his face is carefully blank. Full-on Ice Queen mode. “You’re right. It’s not fair to you, I get it. Your sock’s over there.”

“It ain’t fair to neither of us.” Vanjie grabs the sock from the floor, and is pulling on his Timbs instead of looking at Brooke’s collarbones. He wants to, but if he looks at them he’ll want to bite them, and if he gets close enough to touch Brooke he’s fucked.

“So. We, uh-” Breathe. Don’t look at him. Don’t touch him. “We good?”

Brooke nods. “None of this. No touching.”

“Friends and shit,” Vanjie says, and his voice only breaks a little. To distract Brooke from that awful sound, he drags his hand slowly down his chest. “Just pretend all o’ this is the Season 11 crown. You can look at it, but you can’t have it.”

“Shady bitch,” Brooke murmurs, smiling spreading over his face.

Vanjie laughs like he ain’t in a million pieces. He doesn’t look at Brooke as he leaves. He’s got his own room on the tour, ‘bout time he slept in it.

He wants a love story, right? A happily-ever-after with a kiss and a sunset and - horses? Maybe a couple of horses. 

A handsome prince, who doesn’t get annoyed when Vanjie runs his mouth, and doesn’t think he’s clingy, and ain’t afraid of relationships.

You know. That whole thing.

He’s looking for his love story, and none of the good ones end like this.

* * *

_Maybe you fall in love on television._

_On set, in front of cameras that click like crickets and shine like gunmetal. In this world there is no tedium, no negotiating, no compromise - jus a slow-motion free fall into each other‘s arms. And maybe when you get to the real world that sort of love doesn’t last. Things become complicated. There are demands on your time, there are obligations. Dishes in the sink and laundry, fucking laundry. And there’s distance. There’s so much distance. Maybe after a few months or days or weeks apart, one of you forgets the way the other one smells. You wake up and realize that his cologne has faded from your sheets, your clothing. Maybe you start to notice other people, the lavender or bergamot or orange peel of their skin. In every crowd strangers are smiling at you, touching your hands and writing their numbers down. Maybe months later you look at him from across a stage - “Are you still together?” - and feel the knife-sharp ache carve cleanly through you, breastbone to navel, splitting you open like a peach, revealing your broken heart to the wide and broken world._

_Is this an ending?_

* * *

It gets worse after that. 

Vanjie ain’t expecting it, thinks he’ll figure his shit out and move on. Stuck on tour together, there aren’t a lot of places he can go where Brooke isn’t all up in his business, but at least Vanjie doesn’t smell like him anymore. At least he doesn’t wake up with his arms around Brooke’s waist and Brooke’s soft, sour breath in his face. At least Vanjie doesn’t stare at him in the silent, sunlit space before Brooke wakes (he only ever did that for a bit anyway, couple minutes, not like a psycho or nothing. Brooke’s damn eyelashes are darker at the roots, a honey-blonde that fades out to white, and when he’s sleeping there are no lines on his forehead at all, and no lines around his eyes, and Vanjie might be in love with him.)

So at least there’s that, right? It’s something. Progress.

Sometimes after the show they’ll all go out dancing, and Vanjie will be with his girls pretending not to see Brooke smiling and flirting with whatever trade he’s found in whatever bar they’re in (Brooke always finds someone.) And sometimes Vanjie will drink too much, vibrating with the pitch of the music, punching like a pulse, and Brooke will somehow end up inches away from him, bottle of water in his hand, not smiling.

“Don’t,” Vanjie says, leaning close enough to Brooke’s neck that he can smell his moisturizer.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t kiss me.” Vanjie tilts his head back, looks Brooke in his pretty blue eyes, because they made a rule, right? Vanjie’s gonna get over this white boy if it kills him.

“I wasn’t going to,” Brooke laughs, and their hips are swaying together but inches apart, in time to the Nicki Minaj song that’s blasting through the speakers. Back before all the shit went down, Brooke would have had his hand on Vanjie’s waist, maybe a thigh between Vanjie’s legs if they were drunk enough and the dance floor was crowded. They might be kissing, grinding on each other, fucking each other up as much as they could without getting arrested.

Or maybe Vanjie’d be facing away from him, that was always good too. Brooke’s chest up against Vanjie’s back, Brooke’s mouth hot and sharp at the place where Vanjie’s neck met his shoulder. Vanjie liked being shorter then, liked having this big Canadian all over him, all around him, huge and heavy as the thump of the bass.

“I wasn’t going to,” Brooke says again.

“Good.” Vanjie looks at Brooke’s mouth even though he shouldn’t. Looking’s almost as dangerous as the other thing, the touching thing. Not quite, but still a really stupid fucking idea.

“This is for you.” Brooke hands the bottled water over (tap water makes Vanjie sick sometimes, depends on where they are.) “You wanna dance?” 

It would be so easy to say yes, so easy to close the narrow gap between their bodies, to suck the fabric of Brooke’s tank top into his mouth and bite down -

“Nah, better not,” Vanjie says.

Brooke smiles and steps back. Steps back again. Moves off through the crowd, lets strangers put their hands on his hips, their arms around his shoulders (Vanjie inhales deeply and holds his breath, traps the scent of Brooke’s skin in his mouth for as long as he can.)

That night the bartender slides Vanjie his number, and Vanjie winks and smiles and talks all kinds of shit with him, before tossing the piece of paper in the trash on his way to the cab.

* * *

_Is there another love story here - one that ends differently?_

_A story where he calls you before the season airs, drunk off his ass on tequila, says, “I need you I need you I’m sorry,” and then the call cuts out and his phone hits the pavement._

_Then the next morning, sober and unsteady as a fault line, he calls you back. He tells you he was scared. Tells you he fucked up and you’re worth it and he misses you more than anything. Maybe you say “I’m in love with you,” and he laughs on the other line, voice full of pain and relief and it makes you float three feet off the ground in your apartment, pressed up against the stucco ceiling._

_Is there another love story where he never makes you cry? Never says: “_ _**You want - what - the Notebook? It’s a fucking movie, it’s not a real thing that happens to real people -”** _

“ _ **What the fuck you know about that? You don’t know, because you ain’t done it. Mr. Ain’t Even Had a Boyfriend Before - don’t tell me how this works, what’s real -”**_

“ _ **Oh well fuck me I guess for having realistic expectations -”**_

“ _ **Nah, fuck you for doing this over the phone -“**_ _No. No._

_None of that._

_Instead he calls you, he calls you back, he calls you, and you spend weeks flirting in clubs and on social media and when you go to the reunion he helps lace up your heels, dragging his hands up your legs like you’re a marble sculpture behind glass somewhere, something he ain’t allowed to touch. And when they ask, he says “yes, we’re still together” and you kiss on camera, in front of your best friends, in front of everybody, light spilling out of your mouth like you swallowed a star._

_Is this a happy ending? Is it an ending at all? What happens next?_

* * *

The tour keeps touring. 

Vanjie travels by bus, by plane, by train. He doesn’t sit by Brooke, not ever. That bitch is all legs and elbows, he’d be stretched over Vanjie’s seat the moment he sat down. And they made a rule, Vanjie isn’t going back on it (even though he knows how warm Brooke’s body would be against his, knows how his head fits against his shoulder.) So he sits up at the front with Silk and A’Keria, leaves Brooke to find his own way, sprawl all over Nina or someone else who’s got time for that.

When he’s performing, Vanjie flirts with the audience like it’s his job, like he’s getting paid in hearts. Sometimes he sees Brooke watching him (in the audience or in the wings, arms folded in front of himself like armour.) Vanjie tries not to look, but he always knows when Brooke’s there, can feel his gaze sliding over him like his lips might. So Vanjie touches other people, curls his fingers around the hands of men holding out tips, ruffles hair, kisses cheeks. He leans against Silky (ain’t nothing new about that, the Dream Girls are always all over each other) and Nina’s a cuddler and Vanjie’s got plenty of people who want to touch him. 

Not that Brooke doesn’t _want_ to - that much is clear from the way those blue eyes go flinty when Vanjie’s dancing up on someone else in the club or on stage (blue is the hottest kinda flame, right? You think a blue like that is gonna be cold, but it isn’t. Just like you think Brooke Lynn is gonna be cold, all carved outta ice and sharp edged and shimmering, but he ain’t. His skin is so warm that sometimes Vanjie would have to pull his hands back so he didn’t get burned; even hours later, his palms would glow gold.) 

In the dressing room they are very careful. Vanjie doesn’t ask Brooke to get his zipper, Brooke keeps space between their bodies as he sneaks past to grab a makeup sponge. It’s crowded and chaotic but they manage to orbit around each other like planets, never getting too close. It’s kinda like a dance, and Vanjie’s a hell of a dancer. 

(“Earrings, girl.” Brooke leans close (but not too close) to hand them over.

“Thanks. This your highlighter?”

“No, I got it for you last time I was at Sephora. That’s your shade, right?”

“Yeah.” Vanjie looks at the stick, still sealed in plastic. Then he looks over at Brooke who is staring into the mirror and lining his lips, over and over again until he gets them straight. A pink like the horizon in L.A., six AM. A pink like rose petals scattered over sheets, or across the runway. “Yeah, it is.” _)_

This should be easy for him. 

But it’s kinda like being back on Drag Race, being so close to each other but always out of reach. It made Vanjie grind his teeth together then, and he’s ‘bout ready to crack a molar now (he always was that kid, the kid who wanted what he couldn’t have. The kid who wanted the hot surface of the stove soon as you told him to be careful, the kid who wanted sugar and booze and all the sharpest, rustiest edges, everything he wasn’t supposed to touch.)

Vanjie gets phone numbers, gets all sorts of trade sliding into his DMs, but he goes to bed alone. And maybe he sometimes thinks about Brooke there - how wet his mouth could be, how his fingers felt wrapped around each of Vanjie’s wrists - 

\- but he’s allowed to think about it. There ain’t no rules against thinking.

It’s the last night before Brooke is fucking off to Canada for a couple shows, leaving the rest of them behind. Vanjie isn’t pressed about it, it’s gonna be nice not to get all twitchy in the dressing room for a change. He’ll get some fucking sleep for once (and he ain’t going on Brooke’s instagram; he’s making it his New Years resolution and getting started early.)

They’re all weaving back from a night at the club, the other queens loud and glittering in front of Vanjie, when his heel comes off. He stops to fix it, nearly loses his balance, and then there is a hand on his shoulder - steadying him.

The hand is warm, so warm that Vanjie should know who it belongs to immediately. And he’s sloppy with tequila, wants nothing more than that hand to slide up into his hair and jerk his head back - but he pulls away. Straightens up. Blinks at Brooke, who’s taller than a bitch has any right to be and so fucking sexy in purple and gold -

“Sorry,” Brooke says, lifting both his hands. “You okay?”

“Oh, I’m doing just fine, mama.” Vanjie’s ice-pick heels skid on the pavement. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I wasn’t saying anything.”

They walk together, since everyone seems to have forgotten they exist (A’Keria at least gives Vanjie a worried glance over her shoulder, but he waves her off.) It’s almost three AM; even in full face, the streets are too empty for them to be attracting attention.

“They loved you tonight,” Brooke says as they walk, so quiet that at first all Vanjie hears is ‘loved you’ and has to piece the rest together a beat later, after his heart has started up again.

“Oh. Yeah, bitch, you know I don’t come to play. They loved you too, Miss Thing in your pointe shoes.” Up ahead, Silk is shouting about something, and Vanjie just makes out his name. Whatever, she’s probably just talking some bullshit. “What time you fly out tomorrow?”

“Way too early.”

Their shoulders don’t brush against each other’s as they walk. Vanjie is very careful about that. He can feel the banked coals of Brooke’s skin in the narrow space between them, and it’s almost as bad. 

The hotel is only a few blocks away. Vanjie won’t have to deal with it long.

“I’ll miss you,” Brooke says suddenly, and Vanjie doesn’t _fall teeth first into the sidewalk, doesn’t crack his jaw and scrape the skin off his cheekbones_ \- but it feels about the same.

So many bullshit responses run through his head, scattering like mice in the light, but he takes too long deciding what to say, and then it’s too late. 

“It’s nice being in the same place for once,” Brooke continues, looking straight ahead, words only slightly slurred. “I like it.” 

“Well I’m - that’s - bitch, I-“ _Make words happen, Mary_. You ain’t been so stupid since the first day you met this queen, gagged and shell-shocked in the Werk Room like some sort of teenager. “Yeah.”

“I kinda - miss you already.” Brooke laughs weakly. “That’s weird, right? A weird thing to say.”

Vanjie doesn’t know - quite how to answer that. Because he understands that feeling, gets it in a bone-deep sorta way, like he’s been missing Brooke since the season finished shooting. Like he’s missing Brooke right now, with only a couple inches of air between their skin.

They keep walking.

“I’m sorry.” Brooke’s voice is low, and he’s tugging at the curling ends of his wig, blonde fading to pale pink. “I don’t know if I’ve said that enough. Sorry about how it went down. That I couldn’t be what you wanted.”

Vanjie hates every damn word coming out of Brooke’s damn mouth, each one smells like bleach and tastes like arsenic. “Brooke -“

“I know you were looking for that fairytale. And you deserve it. You do.”

The hotel is maybe on the next block? When they go around the corner, they’ll be able to see it. Vanessa feels something fucked up happening to his eyes, like they’re getting all blurry. Like - _shit_ -

“You - hey baby, don’t -“

“Shut the fuck up.” Vanjie wipes at his face, probably smearing his eyeliner all to hell but whatever, it’s still dark out.

Neither of them say anything else for a bit, not until they’ve almost caught up with the other queens, and even then it’s only because Vanjie’s drunk and in his feelings. He has this thing in his head, and it’s stupid, and he wants to tell his own damn self to shut up but - but Brooke’s body is so close beside him, and it’s Brooke’s last night here, and it’s been more than three weeks since Vanjie got to sink his teeth into Brooke’s delicious lower lip -

“I think maybe I got it.” If Vanjie doesn’t say it the words might choke him.“The fairytale. You know. If I hadn’t got sent home Season 10, hadn’t been so sickening on my way out, they never would’ve brought me back. Maybe you woulda just stayed some piece of something in my DMs. So like - that we got to even have this - even for a bit -“

Vanjie gestures vaguely between the two of them, movements clumsy.

“But you only get one.” The words smell like bleach and taste like arsenic. “Think I used mine up.” 

“Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, I been calling your name bitch! Are you coming with Kiki and me to Burger King or not?” Silk shouts over her shoulder.

Vanjie smiles because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s good at smiling, can do it even when his chest is being split wide open. He doesn’t want to look at Brooke, but he can’t help himself (Brooke’s all body heat and blue flame and purple and gold and Vanjie’s in love with him, _the fuck_ is he doing with his life.)

“Don’t matter, baby,” he says quietly. “Don’t matter. I had it for a minute, right?”

“Jose -“ Brooke takes a step closer. “That’s -“

“Don’t kiss me.”

They look at each other, just breathing. Vanjie can feel the two halves of his broken heart rattling around in his chest.

“I wasn’t going to,” Brooke says, voice shaking as much as Vanjie’s hands are.

“Miss Vaaaanjie!” Silky shouts again, and Vanjie smiles (blood staining his white teeth) leaves Brooke alone on the sidewalk. He wobbles off to his girls, ignores A’Keria’s sad puppy dog eyes and Silk’s bullshit comments for the rest of the night, stuffs his mouth full of onion rings so he don’t gotta feel a different sort of hungry.

And when he goes back to his hotel room alone, he thinks about Brooke. Because he’s allowed to. 

There ain’t no rules against that.

* * *

_Or what if that doesn’t happen? What if instead you get back to the hotel and show up outside his door, say “fuck it” and suck a mark onto his neck that he’s gonna have to cover for days? What if you get his skin, all salt-sweet and stinging against your tongue? What if he drags you inside and you don’t even make it to the bed, hands and knees on the hotel carpet, hardly able to say his name around the red-hot heart in your throat? And then later, in bed, he pushes your hair out of your eyes - it’s getting too long - and you say “I’m still in love with you.”_

_Fade to black. Credits. Helluva ending._

_Or maybe you gotta wait. The waiting is okay, hurts in that nice sorta way and you’ve been waiting long enough that it’s an art form now, like blocking out your brows. So maybe you wait. And after the tour’s over, maybe you go to Aruba. The tickets are bought and the hotel is booked and he made you a promise, “Vanjie, we’re going on vacation,” and looking so fine it was just about enough to break your heart on the runway._

_That’d be a good story, right?_

_Maybe when you’re there in the sunshine and salt you look over at him and it all makes sense again, all slides into place. By your side, eyes closed against the light, he looks like a shield and and feels like a sword. Nothing’s frightening when he’s within reach, nothing. Maybe you say “Can we try this again?” but what you’re really saying is ‘take me back, take me back, take me back’_ _\- three words, a question and a prayer and a spell for calling loved-ones (your tia was a bit of a bruja, you don’t fuck with that shit.)_

_Take me back. I got nothing without you, my hands are empty._

_Maybe then he says yes, and kisses you like he remembers how you taste, like you’re the only person on the whole beach on the whole island in the whole world. Maybe he kisses you and you open up both hands, full to overflowing with clear water._

_Is this an ending? Here on a beach in the sunlight - it’d be a real pretty one. A proper fairytale, all washed clean with salt._

_What a way to go._

* * *

Here’s the thing that nobody knows: Vanjie’s the one who ended it.

You wouldn’t get that from watching the reunion, Brooke going off about wanting to fuck around and that. And he did, and he does, but he didn’t do none of that while he was with Vanjie. They talked about it, they talked about a lot of things in increasing frequency and volume, and finally there was the night Vanjie was dead tired and Brooke was light years away, mumbling into the phone about how hard long-distance shit was and Vanessa just - 

Vanessa was done.

_(_ “If it’s so hard then what are we even doin’ here? If I ain’t worth it to you -“

“I didn’t say that. Fuck, I would never say you weren’t -“

“Well it feels like you’re saying it. Feels like you’ve been saying it for four months now. It’s not supposed to be this much work, Brock, it’s supposed to be easy -“)

Vanjie gets into it with his girls, all his stupid feelings, three nights after Brooke’s left the tour. He hasn’t had that much to drink, not really. It’s exhaustion that’s slowing down his heartbeat, making the room spin. Brooke was all over Instagram tonight, and Vanjie shouldn’t have known that, but he did.

“You only get one fairytale.” He’s running his mouth, trying to make them understand. “And I used mine up.” Then he almost falls off the bed. 

Above him, Silky and A’Keria exchange A Look.

“Girl, you know we love your dumb ass, but that’s some bullshit right there.”

Vanjie doesn’t start crying, he doesn’t. It’s a near thing, though, and what the fuck is his problem lately. Whatever, the Dream Girls have seen him worse, seen him uglier (right after the break-up, and right after the reunion, and that one night in Orlando when the Snatch Game episode aired and Brooke was smiling so pretty on-screen as Vanjie kissed him, the two of them stupid in love and also just stupid.) 

“It ain’t bullshit,” Vanjie protests weakly. “Bitch, it’s _The Notebook_.”

“I already got a kid, why do I have to parent her as well?” A’Keria says to Silk.

“You ain’t go to do nothing, ho.” The bed shifts as Silk stretches out beside Vanjie, a warm weight all along his side. 

“Miss motherfucking Vanjie. You know this ain’t a movie, right?”

“I’m not stupid –“

Silk cuts him off. “I ain’t saying you are. But I think you got some stories in your head that aren’t doing you no favours. Like all this fairytale shit.”

“You’re cute as hell, baby, all this nonsense.” A’Keria sits down on the other of Vanjie, pets his long-ass hair. “It’s why we love you. But – you can’t expect the rest of the world to be your kind of crazy. Not when it hurts you so bad.”

“It was me,” Vanjie says, and then breathes into the bedsheets, breathes and breathes while he still can. “Did you know? I’m the one who kicked his ass to the curb. I’m the one who –“ His voice breaks, and A’Keria sighs.

“Yeah, sis, we been knew. You’ve told us that, like, every time you got more than two drinks in you.”

“And we may love your dumb ass, but not enough to see you act a fool.” Silky gives him a shove. “I ain't saying you should take him back or nothing. He’s a shady-lady, that one. I ain't telling you what to do. But I am saying you sure as hell get more than one love story.”

Vanjie can’t talk for a bit. A’Keria keeps petting his head.

“Shit, you think people just go around givin’ up every time they get their hearts broke?”

“But if it ain’t perfect - like.” Vanjie doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore. “If it ain’t that fairytale -“

“It _ain’t_. Girl, that’s not how this works.”

“How the fuck does it work then? Cuz I don’t know.“

“What - you think _I_ do?” Silk barks out a laugh, “Where’s _my_ sugar daddy at? Bitch, we’re all just figuring our shit out. You’re looking for a map where there ain’t one.”

Vanjie thinks about the map he mighta drawn for himself (in ballpoint, on the back of his hand, more of a kid’s treasure map than something from an atlas. A line that curves over his knuckles, wraps around his thumb, around his wrist. A thin black thread side-winding to an **X** in the centre of his palm.

And would the **X** have fire-blue eyes and smell like vanilla? Would the **X** be a camera crew and a crown and a world falling in love with him? A wedding day, with his mama looking fierce and smiling at him from the front row? A house full of kids screaming nonsense and someone warm and strong beside him, a sword and a shield and a spell and a prayer -)

“Aw hell.” Vanjie’s gotta distract himself or he might die. “Is this where I’m supposed to learn that real love is friendship and shit?”

“Yeah right, like you’d ever try to learn something,” Silk says, “Besides, my sugar daddy comes along, I’ma leave you girls in the dust. You ain’t never gonna see me again.”

A’Keria laughs and flops down over Vanjie’s back, and Silk hugs him and Vanjie tells himself to get his shit together. Good God Girl, figure it the hell out (or at least fall for someone who can actually do relationships without having a damn panic attack.)

But that night in his room, Vanjie draws a map on his hand. 

Studies it, follows the line with his eyes until they’re too tired and the line starts to double. He doesn’t mark an **X** \- doesn’t know where to put it, or what he might find there if he grabbed a shovel and broke through the dark earth.

They fly to England the next afternoon, get loud and white-girl wasted in first class cuz that shit’s free. Brooke joins them a few days later, shows up in the middle of rehearsal. Vanjie is onstage, running over the changes to the Dream Girls number when the back door of the theatre bangs open and a tall blonde idiot comes stomping in.

Brooke is dressed in sweats, holding a massive cup of coffee and looking exhausted. Vanjie misses his cue and almost knocks A’Keria over.

“Bitch, what are you – oh.” Silk glances from Vanjie to Brooke and back again, pressed as all hell.

Vanjie glares at Silky, shakes his head, and they take it from the top.

In the audience of queens waiting for their turn on stage, Brooke has slumped down beside Nina, dropping his head to rest on the back of the seat in front of him. Vanjie counts the beats down silently, tells himself to focus up.

_1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and -_

_1_ (why’s he look so tired) _2_ (why’s he look so good) _3_ (bet that sweatshirt’s soft) _4_ (you’re a stupid bitch, Jose) -

Vanjie gets the new choreography this time, or at least doesn’t knock anyone over. When the song is done and A’Keria is satisfied enough to let them escape, Vanjie joins his sisters in the audience to watch the rest of the run-through. He does a couple calculations in his head – how close can he get without making shit weird – and sits in the empty row two behind Brooke, pretends he ain’t bothered. Brooke immediately turns around, stretches his long arm across the back of the seat as he smiles at Vanjie.

“Hi,” he says quietly. “You looked good up there.”

“You look like shit,” Vanjie says in response, and it makes Brooke laugh. 

“I feel like it. Can never sleep on planes. How have the last couple shows been?”

“Flawless. Best yet. Wonder why?”

“Maybe because no one’s been here to distract you.” Brooke raises an eyebrow, and Vanjie shakes her head.

“Bitch, you wish you were fine enough to distract me.” Vanjie doesn’t ask him how Toronto was, he saw the fucking photos.

“Hey, this is yours.” Brooke rummages in his backpack and pulls out a brown paper bag. He leans toward Vanjie, reaches across the aisle. “Got you a danish. I was getting coffee, figured you’d be hangry about now.”

“Oh.” Vanjie looks at him. Waits just a second before he takes the bag. He’s very, very careful to not let their fingers touch. “Uh, thanks.”

“No problem.”

Brooke smiles with his exhausted-ass face, crazy purple eyes that somehow make Vanjie feel like he’s been smacked across the jaw. 

“How come I don’t get danishes?” Nina fake pouts in the seat next to Brooke.

“Cuz this fool didn’t break _your_ heart,” Vanjie says.

It’s a throwaway line. 

A bullshit joke.

Vanjie says it without thinking, just running his mouth like he always does. Except this time, Brooke is looking at him when he says it. And this time Vanjie is looking back. And it’s like black ice cracking underneath their feet.

Brooke stands up, says “Um,” but Vanjie is faster.

“Shit, forgot I gotta -“ He can’t even come up with a lie, books it out of there like a crazy bitch. He’s on the edge of the row and he hustles down the centre aisle without anyone catching up to him. Without anyone touching his shoulder, making him stop (maybe Brooke doesn’t even come after him anyway, maybe he just stood up for fun, for a change in damn perspective.) 

Vanjie cringes as the theatre doors slam shut behind him. _Fuck, fuck, fuck it all ._

What the hell was he thinking, saying something so stupid?

What the hell is he doing running away?

That night, he feels Brooke’s gaze like a razor as he slays “No More Drama,” crawling across the floor and eye-fucking the trade in the front row. He can’t touch Brooke so he touches himself, drags his hands down his flat chest, over his waist, the curves of his hip pads. He touches himself like he’s gorgeous, beloved, the only person worth looking at under the stage lights. The audience loses their damn minds after he’s done, and as he goes offstage he passes an inch away from Brooke in his bondage “Hytes” get-up, criss-crossed with black **X** ’s.

Shit.

“Good job,” Brooke says, real quiet. He smells like vanilla and hairspray and his fancy bullshit moisturizer. 

They haven’t talked about the whole thing in the theatre that morning. Vanjie’s not ever going to talk about it, never.

“Press the inside of your left lashes down,” Vanjie says, gesturing to his own face like he’s a mirror. “I can see them coming away.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Kill it, bitch.” And Vanjie means something else, something he doesn’t even know how to put into words. Something like “ _I see you.”_

“ _I see your lashes, and your bottled water, and your bullshit, and your tired eyes.”_

“ _I see you trying.”_

“ _I see -“_

“Thanks,” Brooke says again (you only get one fairytale, right?) and Vanjie does not touch him.

* * *

_Maybe you gotta wait even longer for your ending._

_Maybe the ache comes slow, creeps like ivy up an old porch until it’s everywhere, tangled into reef knots, eating through the wood and brick._

_Maybe you exchange silver rings, stand in a forest outside a small town in Ontario with your mama in the front row, looking fierce and only crying a little. Maybe all the nonsense and all the lies come true for you, maybe there are green leaves and dappled sunshine and you look at him and think: I will feel like this until my heart stops beating._

_I will feel like this until the end of the world._

_Maybe your body changes shape, moves pieces of itself aside for this other person to curve into. At night you sleep like question marks, you connect the moles on his back to find constellations, you pet his eyebrows. Maybe it lasts for years like this._

_Maybe five._

_Maybe forty-five._

_When do you draw the line and say this is the happy ending?_

_Before the slow drift apart that you swore would never happen, not to you, not to this?_

_Before the tears and packing tape and lawyers and goodbyes?_

_Or maybe it lasts longer, goes all the way to a hospital bed and hands interlocked and an angelic choir of beeping machines? Blue veins, skin like ash -_

_Tell me, is this an ending?_

* * *

It’s raining that night, pouring - of all the damn clichés. Vanjie shoulda seen it coming.

They have a day off before the next show, and Vanjie’s heading back late from the hotel gym, muscles aching and sweat turning his skin gold. And there’s Brooke Lynn Hytes, standing in the middle of the hallway, soaked to the fucking bone.

“The fuck? You go swimming or something?” 

“I was jogging and I lost my key card.” Brooke leans up against his door. His teeth are chattering, just a bit (Vanjie wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t always staring at Brooke’s mouth, but fuck you.). Brooke’s long-sleeved shirt is sticking to his shoulders and stomach. “There’s no one at the damn front desk either.”

“Why you going jogging during a hurricane?”

“It wasn’t this bad before I left.” Brooke shivers, rubs his hands over his arms. His hair looks terrible, blonde and stringy, a wet cocker spaniel. “It’s fine, I can wait here. I’ll keep checking -“

“Really bitch? Really? I’ma just let you stand here, looking like the Little Mermaid or something?” Vanjie grabs his key out of his pocket, gestures for Brooke to follow. Vanjie’s room is only a few down from Brooke’s (don’t ask how he knows this, he just does, and fuck you again.) 

“Here, come on.” He unlocks his door and Brooke comes in after him. “You can shower if you want or - dry off at least. There’s a robe in there. I’ll keep callin’ the front desk, see where the fuck they’re at.”

He hears Brooke close the door behind them. “You sure it’s okay?”

“Sure, I’m sure. It ain’t like -“ Vanjie turns around.

There are raindrops running down Brooke’s neck and his eyes are the colour of the hottest kinda fire (and damn it, Vanjie had been doing so well).

He doesn’t know which one of them moves first, but suddenly he’s in Brooke’s arms, pressed all up against that drowned-rat looking queen, kissing him, kissing him. Vanjie slots their mouths together, wet against warm, clutches _wild_ at the soaking material of Brooke’s shirt. He kisses him everywhere he can reach - the edge of his jaw, his throat, his stringy hair (“ _fuck me_ , fuck me up, _please_ -”) rubs his face against Brooke’s skin until his eyelashes are wet too and Vanjie tells himself it’s just rain. 

Then Brooke’s hand is in his hair, tilting his head back, and his voice is so low and rough that it makes Vanjie almost fall over, and his hips are hitching against Brooke’s and -

“Wait, wait -“ Brooke bites against his throat, “Wait.”

They both freeze. Brooke’s teeth are still on Vanjie’s throat. Vanjie’s hands have climbed up beneath Brooke’s shirt, holding tight to his damp shoulder blades.

Vanjie breathes. Drops his hands, and steps backwards, shaking. “Yeah, you’re right, I -“

“I’m in love with you.”

It’s Brooke who says it. 

Brooke. 

Vanjie almost doesn’t recognize his voice.

“What?”

“And I don’t want to just - I don’t want it to be like it was.”

Vanjie isn’t breathing anymore. Can’t do anything but stand there, lips tasting like rainwater.

“You - what?” He’s gotta be hearing things. In all those endings - Brooke never said it first. “What?”

Brooke blinks his wet, white eyelashes. “I know I fucked up. But I want - I wanted - fuck, I’m sorry. This is hard for me.”

And just like that - Vanjie can breathe again. Shit, he’s so dumb. He lets out a laugh that aches in his ribs, that feels like a cage door opening, starlings flooding out. “Brock. Baby. This is hard for everybody.”

Brooke’s hands are trembling, with cold or maybe with something else, “I don’t want to - break your heart. Fuck, I never - I don’t want to hurt you again.”

And Vanjie wants to say **no, no, no**. It’s going to be easy and perfect and everything it’s supposed to be. It’s going to be a fairytale, _The Notebook_ , or else what’s the damn point?

(But maybe fairytales aren’t something you find. Something you get, something you’re given. Maybe they’re something you write.

Something you build.)

“I mean.” Vanjie breathes through his nose and swears to God he won’t start crying. “You might hurt me. Or I might hurt you. And Silk will probably kick both our asses when we do.”

And because he falls over and over, never fucking learns a thing and isn’t going to start now, he reaches out. Stops Brooke’s trembling hands with his own.

“Shit. You wanna try it anyway?”

Brooke closes his eyes when he nods, but only for a moment. And when Vanjie takes a step closer, leans in - Brooke stops him, gently, a hand on each shoulder.

“Don’t kiss me,” he says quietly. But then he smiles, just the corner of that pretty pink mouth. “Yet.”

Vanjie doesn’t, even though the longing is all wrapped around his throat, about to choke him. He doesn’t. He smiles back at Brooke Lynn Hytes, and the stretch of it hurts but in a good way. 

“You should have a shower. You want some food after? We can get room service or something,” Vanjie says.

“Okay,” Brooke says and his eyes are shining.

“And we can - talk. If you want.”

“Yeah, I want to.” 

“Okay,” Vanjie says. Brooke turns to go into the bathroom, and Vanjie might start laughing but he’s not going to start crying. 

He’s going to call the front desk and get Brooke a goddamn room key. Then maybe he’ll shower too, get into his sweats, eat something. 

And they’ll talk. 

( _This is not the happy ending you were looking for.)_

And Vanessa will say something, something like, “I see you,” and it will weigh enough to crack the spines of those small words.

_(But oh my darling -)_

And they’ll touch. Soon. 

Not yet.

( _\- it’s a start._ )

**Author's Note:**

> The tenth in the Behind Closed Doors Series. Tomorrow we will post the last one and the series will be complete.


End file.
